


some other day

by flowermasters



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Compliant, F/M, Mild Sexual Content, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Time Travel, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 06:30:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18686014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowermasters/pseuds/flowermasters
Summary: Steve shows up like something out of a dream.





	some other day

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written for Steggy in quite some time, but I had to get _something_ out. Wow. We did it, guys. We dreamed the impossible dream.
> 
> Warnings for: Endgame spoilers, mild sexual content. What the FUCK even is a timeline lmao.

“Hey, Peggy,” Steve says, with the stilted air of someone who has been practicing for this moment at length. He has to clear his throat to continue. “Sorry I’m late.”

The light from the setting sun glints off his hair, turning him blonder than she remembers. For a moment she simply stares at his face, unable to do anything but, until he shifts his weight just enough to cause the floorboards of her porch to creak under his weight. He has his hands clasped behind his back, less like a soldier than a schoolboy prepared to give a presentation. A passing car, driving too quickly for this little neighborhood, startles them both.

“You—,” Peggy says finally, licking dry lips, “you’re not—Who are you? Show me your hands. Now.”

She’s only just gotten home; there’s a small handgun in her purse, sitting on the little table by the front door. She can’t look away from the gold shine of his hair; the pink bow of his mouth; the sky blue of his eyes.

After all the things she’s seen—it wouldn’t be hard to put on Steve’s face. Actors made a career of it during the war and after. It wouldn’t be difficult at all for a spy or an assassin to do the same. She’s surprised it hasn’t happened sooner.

“It’s me,” Steve says, looking as though he’d expected this, his shoulders braced as if pushing against a strong wind. He moves his hands, at least, so she can see that they’re empty. “It’s Steve. I can explain everything.”

He pauses, looking sheepish. Looking like Steve. “Well. I can try, at least.”

* * *

His explanation, stumbling as it is, takes a long time. To her own great surprise, she doesn’t ask many questions; it’s all so confusing, so absolutely ludicrous, that she doesn’t know where to begin. Instead she studies him, catalogues his appearance the way a scientist might. He wears a button-down shirt, slacks, plain brown shoes. His hands are steady and strong as he makes the occasional gentle gesture—not black with frostbite as they would be if he had frozen to death. His coloring is healthy, not tinged with blue from the icy water he should’ve drowned in.

But there are changes. He looks tired—not like the superhumanly fresh-faced man she remembers. Even after rough missions, missions where he came back battered and bruised, he was always bright-eyed and alert. There’s a shadow of a beard about his jaw. His shirt collar is terribly wilted.

It’s been over a decade, he says, for him. Since he came out of that ice. Sixty years from now.

“Can I get you something?” he asks, rubbing his hands against his thighs, fidgety. “You look a little—well. You look fine. But I know this is a lot.”

He makes her some tea, but doesn’t let it steep long enough. It’s a bit more palatable when he adds in the brandy she requests. He surprises her by pouring a finger of it for himself, all within sight of her as she sits at the kitchen table.

“You can’t get drunk,” Peggy says, watching as he merely holds his glass after he sits back down across from her in the creaky wooden chair. “Or has that changed in the intervening decades?”

Steve half-smiles, and something seizes painfully in her chest when he looks at her askance, in that dear way of his.

“No,” he says. “Doesn’t stop me from trying.”

* * *

She doesn’t expect to cry. It’s quite an inconvenience.

It makes sense, of course. She knows what strange things shock can do to a person, has known—vaguely, almost subconsciously—that she’s been in shock since the moment she opened her door and saw him standing there. There’s so much to be done, so many questions to be asked. She’s still holding on to the suspicion that this isn’t Steve at all, even as the heart in her breast aches so suddenly and so profoundly because it’s him, _it’s him, it’s really him_.

It’s his apology, of all things, that gets her going. “I’m sorry for—for turning up like this,” he says. “I mean, I—I think I’ve just broken the golden rule of time travel. It’s been explained to me, but my brain just doesn’t work like that.”

When she says nothing, just raises her eyebrows at him, he swallows and looks briefly down at his untouched glass. “But I—I couldn’t go back without seeing you. I couldn’t make myself do it. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Peggy says, and then suddenly there are hot tears in her eyes. “You came back, and you’re apologizing?”

Steve looks at her for a moment, pained, and that makes it worse. She looks down at the tabletop, but she’s already sobbing, making awful, ugly sounds that she tries to choke off as best she can. Steve is suddenly very close, shifting out of his chair to crouch beside her own, and instead of alarming her, his nearness only makes it all that much _worse_.

He doesn’t touch her, keeps his hands gripping nervously at his thighs, but she practically falls upon him, still hiccuping with angry sobs. His shoulders are strong and broad as she hugs him; for the first time since 1942, he’s closer to the ground than she is.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” she says, just as soon as she’s able to contain herself. “I suppose I’ve just been—waiting to wake up, ever since you got here.” Ever since he died, really; for all the moving on she did and tried to do, she’d always known there was a part of her that went down with him. She'd resigned herself to that much, at least. Accepted it for what it was.

He pulls back to look up at her, his expression soft, completely open for the first time since he arrived. “I'm the real deal,” he says. “Promise.”

* * *

“We should take things slow,” he tells her after she kisses him. He’s still crouching in front of her, betraying no signs of discomfort; but then, he wouldn’t. She must look a fright, face blotchy and hair limp after a long day, but he keeps _gazing_ up at her like that, with such foolish tenderness, and it’s rather easy to ignore his words.

She kisses him again, and this time he kisses her back, moving one big hand up to touch her cheek. He swipes away stray moisture with a calloused thumb.

“Peggy, are you—are you with someone?” he asks, suddenly urgent, when they part again. His gaze roves over her face. Perhaps he knows something that she doesn’t. Or, more likely, she thinks, he’s too honorable to waltz in and not ask.

“No,” Peggy says, refusing to think on the matter for overlong. No sense dredging up memories of failed dates, not to mention entire failed relationships. “Are you?”

Steve shakes his head, and she allows herself to sigh with relief and sorrow and sympathy into his mouth.

* * *

He carries her down the hall, her thighs wrapped around his waist and his hands gripping her legs; he pauses only once to adjust his grip, supporting her effortlessly with one hand at the juncture of thigh and rear. As he maneuvers down the hall towards her bedroom, one of her feet catches the shade of the lamp on the credenza in the hall; Steve goes rigid as it falls, then relaxes, his face softening into that sheepish smile she remembers, albeit with more lines about his eyes.

He’s as skittish as a cat, clearly, but that doesn’t stop him from taking her to bed. They make love on top of her heretofore neatly-made sheets, Peggy astride him as he braces his feet on the bed and holds onto her hips. It’s all quite hectic, somehow; she can’t help but marvel at the fact that this messy thing is something they never had the chance to do—or, more accurately, it’s something they wasted their chance to do—but here they are, now. Then Steve shuts his eyes and groans, his precious mouth hanging open, and Peggy forgets to think quite so much.

Afterwards, he lies almost on top of her, head pillowed on her breast, after she waves off his concerns about being heavy. He is, but it’s a weight she can bear. She doesn’t acknowledge it aloud when she feels him start to tremble a bit, to weep softly with his face turned away; he quiets after a few minutes, and she wonders if he’s thinking about leaving.

“If you have to go,” she says finally, “I’ll understand.”

This is a lie, but she can’t bring herself to be angry at him. Not yet, at least. Not when he’s given her this; this, at least, is more than she could have ever hoped for, before.

Steve lifts his head and turns to look at her. She’d forgotten how long his eyelashes were, or else she never knew, before. There’s an air of shaky finality about him, like he’s reached a decision at long last. “I think I'm leaving that up to you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Peggy says, shocked. “I—you know what my answer would be, if you were.”

Steve smiles, and this, as always, softens her up. He lays his head back down on her chest, allows her to run her fingers through his slightly over-long hair. “Still feel like you’re dreaming?” he asks.

“A bit."

“Guess I could pinch you.”

“Mm, perhaps later. If you stick around.”

Steve laughs, hearty and loud, and then things go quiet again, more peaceful than before. At some point, Peggy even closes her eyes. The weight of him on her, beside her, does not shift or disappear; it’s the real deal.


End file.
